Editorial: Plastics in the Environment: Understanding Impacts and Identifying Solutions

[...]the contributions in this Research Topic in Frontiers in Environmental and Marine Science: “Plastics in the Environment: Understanding Impacts and Identifying Solutions” cover a wide variety of aspects of plastic research and embrace a diversity of environment types, climates and habitats over a broad geographical extent (Europe, Asia, Africa, and the Arctic). On beaches, emphasis is placed on the implications of quantifying plastic particles on a mass vs. number basis and considering both surface and buried debris (Ryan et al.), while in surface and subsurface seawater inputs of microplastics are calculated from urban runoff and waste water treatment plants (Schernewski et al.). [...]up the food chain, microplastics are profiled in long-lived marine animals (Meaza et al.) and are measured in a variety of animals, including commercially important pelagic fish (Bakir et al.;Haave et al.), with all studies linking observations to potential impacts on human exposure and health.